The end of December and the beginning of January are the busiest times for the Japanese post offices. The Japanese have a custom of sending New Year's Day postcards (年賀状, nengajō) to their friends and relatives. It is similar to the Western custom of sending Christmas cards. Their original purpose was to give your faraway friends and relatives tidings of yourself and your immediate family. In a manner of speaking, this custom existed for people to tell others whom they did not often meet that they were alive and well.
Japanese people send these postcards so that they arrive on the 1st of January. The post office guarantees to deliver the greeting postcards by the first of January if they are posted within a time limit, from mid-December to near the end of the month and are marked with the word nengajo. In order to deliver these cards on time, the post office usually hires students part-time to help deliver the letters.
It is customary not to send these postcards when one has had a death in the family during the year. In this case, a simple postcard is sent instead to inform friends and relatives that they should not send joyful New Year's cards, in order to show respect for the deceased.
People get their nengajō from many sources. Stationers sell preprinted cards. Most of these have the Chinese zodiac sign of the New Year as their design, or conventional greetings, or both. The Chinese zodiac has a cycle of 12 years. Each year is represented by an animal. The animals are, in order: rat, cow, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and boar. 2006, was the year of the dog; 2007 was the year of the boar, and 2008 is the year of the rat. For 2006, famous dogs like Snoopy and other cartoon characters were especially popular. For 2008, Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse were popular.
The postcards may have spaces for the sender to write a personal message. Blank cards are available, so people can hand-write or draw their own. Rubber stamps with conventional messages and with the annual animal are on sale at department stores and other outlets, and many people buy ink brushes for personal greetings. Special printing devices are popular, especially among people who practice crafts. Software also lets artists create their own designs and output them using their computer's color printer. Because a gregarious individual might have hundreds to write, print shops offer a wide variety of sample postcards with short messages so that the sender has only to write addresses. Even with the rise in popularity of email, the nengajō remains very popular in Japan.
Materials for making nengajō
Conventional nengajō greetings include:
kotoshi mo yoroshiku o-negai-shimasu (今年もよろしくお願いします, kotoshi mo yoroshiku o-negai-shimasu) I hope for your favour again in the coming year
(shinnen) akemashite o-medetō-gozaimasu ((新年)あけましておめでとうございます, (shinnen) akemashite o-medetō-gozaimasu) Happiness to you on the dawn (of a New Year)
kinga shinnen (謹賀新年, kinga shinnen) Happy New Year
shoshun (初春, shoshun) literally "early spring"
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